Rival Black Factions Clash In South Africa -- 4 Dead

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA — Four people were killed Saturday in new racial unrest as rival black political factions attacked each other in Port Elizabeth in eastern Cape province.

Two children, ages 3 and 5, were killed when their home in Port Elizabeth's New Brighton township was firebombed, apparently by political rivals of their father, Gerald Mayekiso, a local leader of the Azanian People's Organization. Their mother was hospitalized with severe burns.

Another activist in the organization was killed by a group of blacks who stoned him to death in Kwazakele, another black township near Port Elizabeth. The fourth victim, a 25-year-old man, was killed by police near Rocklands, also in eastern Cape province, after he ''attacked a policeman with a knife'' while officers tried to stop a group of blacks stoning and attempting to burn a bus, said a spokesman.

Most of the violence Saturday appeared to stem from the increasingly bitter rivalry between the Azanian People's Organization and the United Democratic Front, which are battling for the leadership of South Africa's 25 million blacks and of the anti-apartheid movement as racial unrest here enters its ninth month.

The fundamental issue is ideological: Should the struggle against South Africa's apartheid system of racial segregation be led by blacks in order to achieve black liberation, as the Azanian organization contends? Or should it be a multiracial struggle, including whites, for a future multiracial country, as the United Democratic Front believes?

The practical political issue today is which group will lead the black community in the current crisis and whose strategy will be adopted. Black political observers said the tensions between the rival political camps have led to violence in Port Elizabeth simply because the crisis there is so intense. More than 140 people have died in eastern Cape province since January.